We're at a once-in-a-generation inflection point in computing. The traditional ways of designing and building computing infrastructure are no longer adequate for the exponentially growing demands of workloads like generative AI and LLMs. In fact, the number of parameters in LLMs has increased by 10x per year over the past five years. As a result, customers need AI-optimized infrastructure that is both cost effective and scalable.

For two decades, Google has built some of the industry's leading AI capabilities: from the creation of Google's Transformer architecture that makes gen AI possible, to our AI-optimized infrastructure, which is built to deliver the global scale and performance required by Google products that serve billions of users like YouTube, Gmail, Google Maps, Google Play, and Android. We are excited to bring decades of innovation and research to Google Cloud customers as they pursue transformative opportunities in AI. We offer a complete solution for AI, from computing infrastructure optimized for AI to the end-to-end software and services that support the full lifecycle of model training, tuning, and serving at global scale.

Twitter/X user @momomo_us has unveiled official documentation detailing a new GC-HPCE power connection standard to supply additional GPU power throughout motherboard. This connector can deliver over 600 Watts of power, surpassing 12VHPWR connector's capacity. The GC-HPCE power connector features four groups of pins. Sixteen pins are dedicated to power delivery, while the remaining twelve facilitate communication between the motherboard and the graphics card. Its size is comparable to the regular PCIe x1 connector. Positioned in alignment with the primary PCIe x16 slot on a motherboard, the GC-HPCE power connector is situated behind the x16 slot, typically where the motherboard chipset heatsink is found. This strategic placement ensures the graphics card can be easily slotted into both connectors, simplifying installation. The connector's design negates the need for an additional locking mechanism, as the x16 slot's existing lock sufficiently secures the graphics card.

First showcased at Computex, this connector was featured in several prototype motherboards and graphics cards, emphasizing its potential to enhance cable management and aesthetics. By eliminating supplementary power cables from the graphics card and channeling power through the motherboard, the graphics card's appearance remains uncluttered, and cable management behind the motherboard tray becomes more streamlined. Intriguingly, this connector is a familiar design. It's a modified version of the High Power Card Edge (HPCE) standard prevalent in the server industry. While ASUS has been the primary proponent of this connector, it remains to be seen if other companies will adopt this standard for their consumer products. Additionally, routing power throughout the motherboard will require manufacturers to include additional power regulating circuitry, potentially driving motherboard costs up. It is also not an agreed upon industry standard, which could block some future GPU upgrades from happening.You can check out ASUS'es implementation of the Back-to-Future (BTF) motherboard that supports this connector below.

Jon Peddie Research reports the growth of the global PC-based graphics processor unit (GPU) market reached 61.6 million units in Q2'23 and PC CPU shipments decreased by -23% year over year. Overall, GPUs will have a compound annual growth rate of 3.70% during 2022-2026 and reach an installed base of 2,998 million units at the end of the forecast period. Over the next five years, the penetration of discrete GPUs (dGPUs) in the PC will grow to reach a level of 32%.

Year to year, total GPU shipments, which include all platforms and all types of GPUs, decreased by -27%, desktop graphics decreased by -36%, and notebooks decreased by -23%.

Google Cloud Next—Google Cloud and NVIDIA today announced new AI infrastructure and software for customers to build and deploy massive models for generative AI and speed data science workloads.

In a fireside chat at Google Cloud Next, Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian and NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang discussed how the partnership is bringing end-to-end machine learning services to some of the largest AI customers in the world—including by making it easy to run AI supercomputers with Google Cloud offerings built on NVIDIA technologies. The new hardware and software integrations utilize the same NVIDIA technologies employed over the past two years by Google DeepMind and Google research teams.

HardwareLuxx's editor, Andreas Schilling, was invited by Intel Tech Tour to attend a recent press event at the company's manufacturing facility and test labs in Malaysia. Invited media representatives were allowed to observe ongoing work on next generation client and data center-oriented products. He posted a short summary of these observations via social media: "I've seen wafers with Emerald Rapids XCC on them, that were being cut. Not a surprise at all, but still...also MTL682_C0, so Meteor Lake with 6 P-Cores, 8 E-Cores and GT2 Graphic Tile tested in a C0 stepping and finally the Failure Lab already saw BMG G10 - Battlemage is real." We have been hearing mixed mutterings about the status of Team Blue's next-gen Arc GPU technology, with more concrete evidence of its existence popping up around mid-August—namely in the shape of two Battlemage interposers, BGA2362-BMG-X2 and BGA2727-BMG-X3, uploaded to Intel's DESIGN-iN Tools website.

Schilling elaborated further in his full report: "In the Failure Analysis Lab, we came across a tray that evidently contained chips from the next Arc generation - at least, there were already corresponding chips in the analysis, which were clearly labeled as BMG G10." This chip looks to be lined up to succeed the current Alchemist ACM-G10 GPU, as seen on Intel Arc A750 and A770 discrete graphics cards. A leaked product roadmap shows Intel targeting a Battlemage launch around Q2 - Q3 2024, with the aforementioned G10 having a TDP rating of <225 W, as well as another variant—G21—rated for a maximum power consumption of 150 W.

Chinese board partner Maxsun introduced its flagship—Mega Gamer GPU (MGG)—GeForce RTX 40-series lineup earlier this year, debuting with an RTX 4070 Ti card, and then an RTX 4080 MGG OC 16G model. The rather unique looking cooling solution attracted some attention at the time—a traditional set of three 100 mm fans was augmented with two additional 40 mm "Air Burst" units in a flanking position, acting as exhausts as for the finstack. Earlier today Maxsun revealed the range topping RTX 4090 MGG OC 24G model via a video uploaded to their Weibo channel.

The new headliner looks to be fitted with the same shroud design as seen on the already released RTX 4080 MGG OC 16G model, which includes a somewhat gimmicky magnetically detachable large top-facing RGB LED panel, dubbed "MGG LED Ambient Kit." Thankfully Maxsun has put the work into creating a robust cooling solution, with a vapor chamber capable of meting out 7000 mm² of heat dissipation. Their GeForce RTX 4090 MGG OC 24G model's TDP has been rated at 450 W TDP, with a factory overclock providing a 2580 MHz boost clock. As reported by VideoCardz, Maxsun seems to be sticking to a Chinese market launch for the moment—the company's international AliExpress store has not been updated with a listing for the range topping Mega Gamer GPU.

Sparkle has announced the Titan OC graphics card, becoming the company's flagship Intel Arc A770 16 GB graphics card. It stands out with its 16 GB onboard memory, factory-overclocked GPU and memory, and an advanced cooling system for additional overclocking potential. After Sparkle's re-entry into the graphics card market, it unveiled a series of Intel Arc-based products. The Arc A770 Titan, in particular, showcases the company's technological advancements. The Sparkle Intel Arc A770 Titan OC Edition features Intel's ACM-G10 GPU with a base clock of 2300 MHz, which is a significant increase from Intel's stock 2100 MHz, and boasts a 16 GB memory with a 17.5 GT/s data transfer rate.

The card has two eight-pin auxiliary PCIe power connectors, yielding a 650-watt PSU requirement, and an expansive triple-fan cooling system for optimal performance even under heavy loads. A unique feature is the ThermalSync thermal sensor atop the cooler, which adjusts the LED light bar's color based on temperature, making it easier for users to monitor. When Intel discontinued its Limited Edition Arc A770 16 GB graphics card, there was a gap in the market for a high-performance graphics card to rival offerings from ASRock and Acer. Sparkle hasn't revealed the pricing for its Intel Arc A770 Titan OC Edition GPU.

Yeston is reported to be returning to an older Sakura cooler design for its forthcoming AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT and 7700 XT custom graphic cards, as well as a new GeForce RTX 4070 model. The Chinese brand continues to distinguish itself from other graphics card manufacturers with bold aesthetics and bright pastel colors, which also extends to its choice of printed circuit boards. The yet-to-be-released Sakura RX 7800 XT & RX 7700 XT models are set to be the first Navi 32 silicon-based cards to sport white PCBs and I/O brackets. The Yeston design team has made adjustments to the original cooling solution's dimensions—the updated Sakura shroud is now longer (by 3.4 cm) and a bit chunkier (refer to their diagram below) with larger cooling fans attached—VideoCardz posits that the "diameter increased from 83 mm to 91 mm."

Yeston has not published full details about specs, pricing or regional availability for their latest RDNA 3 cards—it has been quite difficult to procure their very unique looking cards outside of the company's home base of China, although Newegg has reportedly managed to sell price-inflated stock of older models in North America. We expect to see more information disclosed by Yeston closer to AMD's officially mandated launch date of September 6 for the much needed mid-range Radeon RX 7000-series entries.

NVIDIA's latest financial report for FY2Q24 reveals that its data center business reached US$10.32 billion—a QoQ growth of 141% and YoY increase of 171%. The company remains optimistic about its future growth. TrendForce believes that the primary driver behind NVIDIA's robust revenue growth stems from its data center's AI server-related solutions. Key products include AI-accelerated GPUs and AI server HGX reference architecture, which serve as the foundational AI infrastructure for large data centers.

TrendForce further anticipates that NVIDIA will integrate its software and hardware resources. Utilizing a refined approach, NVIDIA will align its high-end, mid-tier, and entry-level GPU AI accelerator chips with various ODMs and OEMs, establishing a collaborative system certification model. Beyond accelerating the deployment of CSP cloud AI server infrastructures, NVIDIA is also partnering with entities like VMware on solutions including the Private AI Foundation. This strategy extends NVIDIA's reach into the edge enterprise AI server market, underpinning steady growth in its data center business for the next two years.

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. announced the all-new Snapdragon G Series handheld gaming portfolio, built to meet the unique performance and feature demands of dedicated gaming devices. The new Snapdragon G Series unlocks a range of options for playing the most sought-after games, offering boundless ways to play virtually any game, anywhere.

"Dedicated handheld gaming devices are the best way to experience mobile games. But gamers want to be able to play all their favorite games across devices and ecosystems, be it their console, PC, or on a cloud service" said Mithun Chandrasekhar, senior director of product management, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. "The new generation of Snapdragon G Series powered devices will be the best place for gamers to play their favorite titles, offering them the ability to choose from the cloud, console, Android, or PC while on-the-go."

During its "Xiamen HighFun" event in China, Minisforum announced the latest addition to its compact series of gaming PCs, this time with no official name. The 6-liter system, code-named "Project RPFXI" for Intel and "Project DRFXI" for AMD, will support up to 100 W TDP and utilize the most powerful Ryzen CPU, the Ryzen 9 7945HX3D. This hybrid mobile/desktop processor combines the desktop-level performance of 16 Zen 4 cores with 144 MB of 3D V-cache, all within a 55 W power limit. Minisforum confirmed the 7945HX3D would be available in the AMD platform version, positioned as a premium model compared to the existing 7945HX system.

Interestingly, the GPU support is literally external, as the potential GPU needs to be attached to the outside part of the case, which is then secured using screws. The case could accommodate the fastest GPUs like NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 with a powerful enough power supply. The 6-liter mini PC is expected to launch in late 2023, either in 24-core Intel (HX line) configuration, of 16-core AMD configuration.

Lenovo Group today announced first quarter results, reporting Group revenue of US$12.9 billion and net income of US$191 million on a non-Hong Kong Financial Reporting Standards (HKFRS) basis. Revenue from the non-PC businesses accounted for 41% of Group revenue, with the service-led business achieving strong growth and sustained profitability - further demonstrating the effectiveness of Lenovo's intelligent transformation strategy.

The Group continues to take proactive actions to keep its Expenses-to-Revenue (E/R) ratio resilient and drive sustainable profitability, whilst also investing for growth and transformation. It remains committed to doubling investment in innovation in the mid-term, including an additional US$1 billion investment over three years to accelerate artificial intelligence (AI) deployment for businesses around the world - specifically AI devices, AI infrastructure, and AI solutions.

Intel recently updated its website to highlight interposers used for testing upcoming chips before their actual product integration. A specific webpage now showcases components used by various tools, notably the "Gen5 VR," which stands for CPU Voltage Regulator in this context. The highlight of the update reveals at least four yet-to-be-announced products: Battlemage (BMG), Arrow Lake (ARL), and Lunar Lake (LNL), slated for launch in 2024. Particularly interesting are the two Battlemage interposers: BGA2362-BMG-X2 and BGA2727-BMG-X3. This hints that a Battlemage GPU could have more pins than Intel's current top-tier GPU from the Alchemist series, known as DG2, which features 2660 pins (BGA2660-DG2-512EU).

This unveiling could indicate Intel's plans to introduce two GPUs in its new series or potentially two different package sizes. Manufacturers often use consistent package sizes for multiple GPUs, granting flexibility to interchange processors with similar specifications and presenting a feasible production strategy. Another notable mention is the Arrow Lake-HX, intended for premium desktop/laptop hybrids.. While there was some buzz about the ARL-HX series before, this update provides clear confirmation from Intel. Lastly, the reveal includes an interposer for the Lunar Lake-M series (LNL-M), which is expected to be Intel's most energy-efficient line. Drawing parallels from the Alder Lake series, such chips were designed for tablets with power consumption between 5 to 7 watts.

Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS), the global leading motherboard, mini PC, notebook, mobile device, and smart solution provider, will attend Europe's largest and the most iconic consumer electronics trade show, IFA Berlin 2023, to exhibit a series of new laptops for education and business.

Optimize Cloud-Based Learning & Teaching: A New Series of Education Chromebooks Can Fulfill Teachers' and Students' Different Needs
After the world enters the post-pandemic era, there are enormous changes in both teaching and learning modes. Meanwhile, digital trend is arising. To meet various requirements from education fields, ECS launches the brand new SG20, SE40, and EP20 education PC series. These thin and ultraportable laptops feature rugged chassis certified by MIL-STD-810H tests. Equipped with Chrome OS, their battery life can last up to 10 hours. Besides, they support 4G LTE and Wi-Fi 6, which is ideal for remote learning.

Overwatch 2 is Blizzard's always-on and ever-evolving free-to-play, team-based action game that's set in an optimistic future, where every match is the ultimate 5v5 battlefield brawl. To unlock the ultimate graphics experience in each battle, upgrade to a GeForce RTX 40 Series graphics card, desktop PC, or laptop for class-leading performance, and unbeatable responsiveness courtesy of NVIDIA Reflex.

The invasion has begun in Overwatch 2's biggest season to date! Fight back in three co-op Player vs. Enemy Story Missions, play PvP as a new Support hero, and tier up the new Invasion Battle Pass to unlock new skins and cosmetics. And you can get the GeForce Overwatch 2 Invasion Ultimate Bundle with the purchase of select GeForce RTX 40 Series products at participating stores, starting today.

Supermicro, Inc., a Total IT Solution Provider for Cloud, AI/ML, Storage, and 5G/Edge, is delivering a high-throughput, low latency E3.S storage solutions supporting the industry's first PCIe Gen 5 drives and CXL modules to meet the demands of large AI Training and HPC clusters, where massive amounts of unstructured data must be delivered to the GPUs and CPUs to achieve faster results.

Supermicro's Petascale systems are a new class of storage servers supporting the latest industry standard E3.S (7.5 mm) Gen 5 NVMe drives from leading storage vendors for up to 256 TB of high throughput, low latency storage in 1U or up to a half petabyte in 2U. Inside, Supermicro's innovative symmetrical architecture reduced latency by ensuring the shortest signal paths for data and maximized airflow over critical components, allowing them to run at optimal speeds. With these new systems, a standard rack can now hold over 20 Petabytes of capacity for high throughput NVMe-oF (NVMe over Fabrics) configurations, ensuring that GPUs remain saturated with data. Systems are available with either the 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors or 4th Gen AMD EPYC processors.

Jon Peddie Research reports the growth of the global PC client-based CPU units market reached 53.6 million units in Q2'23, up 17%, and iGPU shipments increased by 14% to 49 million units. Year over year, iGPUs declined -29%.

Integrated GPUs will have a compound annual growth rate of 2.5% during 2022-2026 and reach an installed base of 4.8 billion units at the end of the forecast period. Over the next five years, the penetration of iGPUs in the PC will grow to reach a level of 98%.

TrendForce highlights in its latest report that memory suppliers are boosting their production capacity in response to escalating orders from NVIDIA and CSPs for their in-house designed chips. These efforts include the expansion of TSV production lines to increase HBM output. Forecasts based on current production plans from suppliers indicate a remarkable 105% annual increase in HBM bit supply by 2024. However, due to the time required for TSV expansion, which encompasses equipment delivery and testing (9 to 12 months), the majority of HBM capacity is expected to materialize by 2Q24.

TrendForce analysis indicates that 2023 to 2024 will be pivotal years for AI development, triggering substantial demand for AI Training chips and thereby boosting HBM utilization. However, as the focus pivots to Inference, the annual growth rate for AI Training chips and HBM is expected to taper off slightly. The imminent boom in HBM production has presented suppliers with a difficult situation: they will need to strike a balance between meeting customer demand to expand market share and avoiding a surplus due to overproduction. Another concern is the potential risk of overbooking, as buyers, anticipating an HBM shortage, might inflate their demand.

NVIDIA today announced NVIDIA OVX servers featuring the new NVIDIA L40S GPU, a powerful, universal data center processor designed to accelerate the most compute-intensive, complex applications, including AI training and inference, 3D design and visualization, video processing and industrial digitalization with the NVIDIA Omniverse platform. The new GPU powers accelerated computing workloads for generative AI, which is transforming workflows and services across industries, including text, image and video generation, chatbots, game development, product design and healthcare.

"As generative AI transforms every industry, enterprises are increasingly seeking large-scale compute resources in the data center," said Bob Pette, vice president of professional visualization at NVIDIA. "OVX systems with NVIDIA L40S GPUs accelerate AI, graphics and video processing workloads, and meet the demanding performance requirements of an ever-increasing set of complex and diverse applications."

PNY Technologies today announced it is now offering the latest NVIDIA RTX Ada Generation GPUs - the NVIDIA RTX 5000, NVIDIA RTX 4500 and NVIDIA RTX 4000 high-performance workstation graphics cards and the NVIDIA L40S GPU for data centers. These new GPUs are now available to order from PNY.

Joining the NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada Generation and NVIDIA RTX 4000 SFF Ada Generation, the NVIDIA RTX 5000, NVIDIA RTX 4500 and NVIDIA RTX 4000 high-performance GPUs are based on the powerful and ultra-efficient NVIDIA Ada Lovelace architecture, making them ideal for real-time ray tracing, physically accurate simulation, neural graphics, and generative AI. These GPUs combine the latest-gen RT Cores, Tensor Cores, and CUDA cores with large GPU memory to offer unprecedented performance for creators and professionals, empowering them to unleash their imagination while maximizing productivity. Turnkey HW + Sync bundles are also available (NVIDIA RTX 5000 + HW Sync, NVIDIA RTX 4500 + HW Sync, NVIDIA RTX 4000 + HW Sync).

NVIDIA today announced the next-generation NVIDIA GH200 Grace Hopper platform - based on a new Grace Hopper Superchip with the world's first HBM3e processor - built for the era of accelerated computing and generative AI. Created to handle the world's most complex generative AI workloads, spanning large language models, recommender systems and vector databases, the new platform will be available in a wide range of configurations. The dual configuration - which delivers up to 3.5x more memory capacity and 3x more bandwidth than the current generation offering - comprises a single server with 144 Arm Neoverse cores, eight petaflops of AI performance and 282 GB of the latest HBM3e memory technology.

"To meet surging demand for generative AI, data centers require accelerated computing platforms with specialized needs," said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. "The new GH200 Grace Hopper Superchip platform delivers this with exceptional memory technology and bandwidth to improve throughput, the ability to connect GPUs to aggregate performance without compromise, and a server design that can be easily deployed across the entire data center."

Low profile graphics cards have always been something of a niche market, but they've found homes in many HTPC builds over the years, especially passively cooled cards. Now Gigabyte has launched a rather odd looking low profile NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 based graphics card that simply goes under the name of GeForce RTX 4060 OC Low Profile 8G. The 182 x 69 x 40 (D x H x W) mm card still manages to pack in three fans and requires an 8-pin power connector to work, which somewhat unfortunately plugs in at the rear of the card, although there wouldn't have been too many other locations to place it. This means that this card might not work in some Mini-ITX builds, due to the card being too long once the power connector is plugged in.

The card width should've given away that we're looking at a dual slot card, which is also pretty obvious from the pictures. Gigabyte provides a full height and a low profile bracket with the card, which not all low profile cards have shipped with in the past, so this is a plus. Connectivity wise, the GeForce RTX 4060 OC Low Profile 8G comes with two DP 1.4a and two HDMI 2.1a ports, making this a card well suited for HTPC usage. Gigabyte has even overclocked the GPU from 2460 MHz to 2475 MHz, which seems quite pointless and is unlikely to bring any huge performance advantages over stock clock speeds.Update Aug 24th: During a recent meeting with Gigabyte we had a chance to go hands-on with their new RTX 4060 Low Profile card, here's some photos.

AMD today announced revenue for the second quarter of 2023 of $5.4 billion, gross margin of 46%, operating loss of $20 million, net income of $27 million and diluted earnings per share of $0.02. On a non-GAAP basis, gross margin was 50%, operating income was $1.1 billion, net income was $948 million and diluted earnings per share was $0.58.

"We delivered strong results in the second quarter as 4th Gen EPYC and Ryzen 7000 processors ramped significantly," said AMD Chair and CEO Dr. Lisa Su. "Our AI engagements increased by more than seven times in the quarter as multiple customers initiated or expanded programs supporting future deployments of Instinct accelerators at scale. We made strong progress meeting key hardware and software milestones to address the growing customer pull for our data center AI solutions and are on-track to launch and ramp production of MI300 accelerators in the fourth quarter."

Inventec, a global leader in high-powered servers headquartered in Taiwan, is launching its cutting-edge C805G6 server for data centers based on AMD's newest 4th Gen EPYC platform—a major innovation in computing power that provides double the operating efficiency of previous platforms. These innovations are timely, as the industry worldwide faces converse challenges—on one hand, a growing need to reduce carbon footprints and power consumption, while, on the other hand, the push for ever higher computing power and performance for AI. In fact, in 2022 MIT found that improving a machine learning model tenfold will require a 10,000-fold increase in computational requirements.

Addressing both pain points, George Lin, VP of Business Unit VI, Inventec Enterprise Business Group (Inventec EBG) notes that, "Our latest C805G6 data center solution represents an innovation both for the present and the future, setting the standard for performance, energy efficiency, and security while delivering top-notch hardware for powering AI workloads."

TrendForce reports that the HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) market's dominant product for 2023 is HBM2e, employed by the NVIDIA A100/A800, AMD MI200, and most CSPs' (Cloud Service Providers) self-developed accelerator chips. As the demand for AI accelerator chips evolves, manufacturers plan to introduce new HBM3e products in 2024, with HBM3 and HBM3e expected to become mainstream in the market next year.

The distinctions between HBM generations primarily lie in their speed. The industry experienced a proliferation of confusing names when transitioning to the HBM3 generation. TrendForce clarifies that the so-called HBM3 in the current market should be subdivided into two categories based on speed. One category includes HBM3 running at speeds between 5.6 to 6.4 Gbps, while the other features the 8 Gbps HBM3e, which also goes by several names including HBM3P, HBM3A, HBM3+, and HBM3 Gen2.